Massimo Pigliucci

If you notice, the meditation is written in the second person.

It's not I did this, but you did this.

As if Marcus were writing to a friend or to somebody else who was listening and he was giving advice to that person.

Even though he was talking about himself.

And again, that is very good.

I was just reading an article the other day in psychological literature.

There's pretty good evidence that this technique helps achieving emotional detachment to some extent from your own actions and therefore engaging more analytically, more critically with what you've done.

And the other external help is talking to a friend, literally talking to a friend, right?

And the Stoics thought that friends, real friends, are so-called friends of virtue, the kind of friends that are okay telling you that you're doing something wrong if they do think that you're doing something wrong.

And you don't need a lot of them, but it's important to have at least one, to have that kind of person that you can go and have a drink and say, you know, I got this issue, what do you think?

Yeah, I've been doing it for years.

And if you know that there is a recurring issue, let's say anger, for instance, or frustration or whatever it is, then you just say, okay, how was I doing five years ago with this?

Or what kind of themes was I preoccupied with?

What kind of issues were bothering me 10 years ago as opposed to now?

And so it becomes also a way to keep track of progress.

Am I doing better on this thing?

Is it something that 10 years ago was bothering me a lot and now it's not because I've actually made progress?

And if not, then perhaps that's one thing that I need to focus on that I was not sufficiently aware of.

I've always been a little bit overweight since I was a kid.

In fact, arguably still am.